A review by brogan7
All the Horses of Iceland by Sarah Tolmie

adventurous challenging inspiring medium-paced

5.0

This book is based on sagas and legends, so it's a different tone to what I normally read.  I enjoyed the flow of it, though, the adventure aspect and the mysterious sense of never really knowing what's real and what's not.  Eyvind is not a magician but manages to enact magic...  (I loved the section where Hoë'lün just doesn't look at a magical being she doesn't want to acknowledge is there, and therefore it doesn't have to exist to her.)  
Different, interesting, strange...sadly patriarchal in its interests and approach, but for the story that it is, it fulfilled my requirements for something completely outside of the ordinary.

"What has a horse to do with a ship?  In a ship, a horse cannot hold on.  A horse cannot row or trim sail or bail out water.  A horse has no business on the sea at all.  Horses were carried here, cold and sick and protesting, in open boats, frost riming their manes, from Norvegr and the Forøyar, from Irland and Hjatland and the Suthreyar." (p.10)
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